Right now, my husband is in the middle of nursing school and I work to support both of us. This is an exciting time for us, or at least I’ve been told that it should be. Turns out it has been harder than I expected.

I don’t think it’s the money aspect, exactly. I make enough money for us to be comfortable, although we have to be more frugal than we used to, and I can even save a little every month. (For a 30- and 35-year-old living in Chicago in 2018, this feels like a huge fucking accomplishment.)

It’s more that right now, we’re in a state of limbo. JD has about two more years of school left, at which point we can…do…something else? We will have an enormous moment of opportunity the second he’s licensed and starts getting job offers, and right now those options are both endless and unknowable.

We could stay right here–there are a ton of hospitals, we love our neighborhood and our friends, I have a job that could really go somewhere. This would be fine.

We could move across the country, maybe to Boston or somewhere in the Rockies or the PNW (note to self: need to visit the PNW before considering a move there).

We could move to Canada or somewhere in the EU, because if you’re going to take a leap, why not a huge one?

So yes, kind of exciting. We’re not yet at the stage where we could start making any decisions, though. Meanwhile, honestly, I haven’t spent nearly enough time figuring out what I want.

I’ve been going along with this plan for the last few years, and now I’m realizing how aimless it’s made me feel. And it’s not because it’s a bad plan. I’m so proud of my husband and I’m glad I can help him become who he wants to be. It’s just that I’ve lost myself in the midst of it. While he’s busy and focused on his schoolwork, I have nothing much to do other than keep making the money and wait for the day to come when we can make a decision about our future. I don’t have a big project to focus on; I’m in a bit of a creative slump. The writing work I really want to do seems impossible. Things are just a tad too comfortable in my day-to-day life, and I’ve become restless and antsy and bored, but with little motivation to do anything about it.

Oh, and then this: I found two new moles on my body recently (not the scary kind, the regular kind, but they weren’t there before!). One of my fingernails is all bent and misshapen, and when I look at it I’m reminded of my grandmother’s hands. A few days ago I spent an hour stretching on the floor because my body hurt. Do you see what I mean? AGE IS UPON ME, AND I’M NOT OKAY WITH IT.

So that’s where I am. I think I’ll come out of it pretty soon–I hope–but I’m not quite done wallowing. Life is unfair in that sometimes all you want to do is lie in bed and play Design Home on your phone, but the precious seconds are ticking by and eventually you have no time at all left to do the things you REALLY wanted to do.

]]>https://urspostrophe.com/2018/01/28/im-either-depressed-or-having-a-quarter-life-crisis/feed/0jessurspostropheThe Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is exactly the kind of show I need right nowhttps://urspostrophe.com/2017/12/09/the-marvelous-mrs-maisel-is-exactly-the-kind-of-show-i-need-right-now/
https://urspostrophe.com/2017/12/09/the-marvelous-mrs-maisel-is-exactly-the-kind-of-show-i-need-right-now/#respondSun, 10 Dec 2017 01:39:20 +0000http://urspostrophe.com/?p=3407One of the most extraordinary moments in the pilot episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is when our hero, Miriam Maisel, and her husband of four years, Joel, kiss goodnight and crawl chastely into bed. Miriam (or “Midge” as she is often called, though I’d rather not), waits until Joel is asleep, at which point she tiptoes out of bed and into the bathroom. Here, she goes through a routine of setting her hair in rollers, washing off her makeup (including removing her false eyelashes!), and slathering what is almost certainly supposed to be Pond’s Cold Cream on her face. On her way back to bed, she raises the window shade about two inches–a move that seems meaningless until the next morning, when Miriam is awoken by the first rays of sunlight hitting her eyes. Once again, she creeps out of bed and essentially reverses the routine of last night–unpinning and brushing out her hair, rinsing and making up her face, putting those damn false lashes back on. She slips back into bed moments before Joel’s alarm starts buzzing. He shuts it off and turns to his wife, waking her with a gentle kiss. She slowly yawns and smiles beatifically at him. “Did the alarm go off? I didn’t even hear it,” she murmurs.

This show is about a fierce, intelligent woman finding strength in stand-up comedy after her marriage falls apart. What I was expecting, knowing that synopsis, was for Miriam to be an understandably bored and unfulfilled housewife who finally gets a chance to break free. But she doesn’t appear bored at all–in fact, she seems to relish her day-to-day routines: visiting the butcher, cooking a brisket, tending her home and family with warmth and interest. She’s a Bryn Mawr graduate from a well-off family, but gives no indication, at first, that she ever wanted anything more than to settle down with a nice man and having a few kids. And this is what awed me about her late-night beauty routine: Miriam performs it so matter-of-factly, showing no trace of resentment at upholding the charade. (You can’t help but consider the logistics: in four years, have she and Joel never had a reason to wake each other up in the middle of the night?)

It’s actually quite a refreshing take. Miriam is having a feminist awakening, but she doesn’t necessarily dislike her conventional lifestyle; she just has something more to say that might have always lain dormant if Joel never left. Having moved into her parents’ home, she gets her first real job so that she won’t have to rely on them for money. She stumbles across a protest in the park and is incredibly moved by the spectacle and power of it, though she knows nothing about the issue the protest is about. In the current world, where it feels like we all know more about the political process than a democratic citizenry should need to, her relative naivete is a pleasurable haven.

Mrs. Maisel was created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, the woman behind Gilmore Girls. I couldn’t get into Gilmore Girls when it was originally on, partly because I found the dialogue too ridiculous–who talks that fast and with that many cultural references? (I know that Gilmore Girls is a beloved show and I’m largely alone as a thirty-year-old woman who doesn’t care for it.) But in 1950s New York, that chewy, saturated dialogue style works. The family dynamics are rich and dramatic, with everyone bringing their particular brand of angst to the table and getting beautifully upset over minor insults. We find an easy antagonist in Joel, who has abruptly left Miriam for the most pedestrian of business-guy reasons (no spoilers, but you can probably guess). Alex Borstein is perfect as Susie, Miriam’s foul-mouthed and perpetually pissed-off manager, whose bad attitude is softened a bit by her jaunty suspenders and newsboy cap.

The show isn’t perfect. It incorporates issues of race into its construct, but in a watered-down way that feels like the writers are trying to tick the Woke box rather than significantly advancing or enriching the story. And when Miriam makes disparaging jokes about other women’s bodies–fat women in particular–it’s not clear whether we’re supposed to be laughing grimly at her very of-its-time internalized misogyny or laughing at a solid joke. As for the fact that she kind of accidentally becomes a stand-up comedian, without years and years of bombing repeatedly in front of bored, sparse crowds? Well, to be fair, there are only eight episodes, but you kind of wish that things would be more realistically difficult for her.

It’s a dense show, though, and these are very minor complaints. Throughout the first season (and they’re booked for a second!), we get to watch Miriam find her way and hone her craft, all while wearing 1958’s most luxurious coats and hats. With its delicious period details and plenty of stunningly awkward moments, it feels like a blend of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Mad Men, and Veep, and I am extremely here for it.

]]>https://urspostrophe.com/2017/12/09/the-marvelous-mrs-maisel-is-exactly-the-kind-of-show-i-need-right-now/feed/0DSC00122.ARWurspostropheAll the other lives I live, based on people who accidentally use my email address as their ownhttps://urspostrophe.com/2017/11/29/all-the-other-lives-i-live-based-on-people-who-accidentally-use-my-email-address-as-their-own/
https://urspostrophe.com/2017/11/29/all-the-other-lives-i-live-based-on-people-who-accidentally-use-my-email-address-as-their-own/#commentsThu, 30 Nov 2017 02:30:52 +0000http://urspostrophe.com/?p=3404I am a woman with a friend named Helen. Helen is a fan of email forwards. She sends me an astonishing photograph of a long line of Canadian Mounties standing shoulder to shoulder on one of those rickety hanging bridges over a ravine and muses, in all caps, whether the Mounties were allowed to choose where in line they stood. She appears to own some property in Florida and sends me updates when the hurricane hits (the house is fine!). She is planning to come visit and writes to ask if she can borrow “Gary’s” car when she gets here. Gary might be my adult son but it’s unclear. At this point I reluctantly write back to Helen for the first time to tell her I’m not who she thinks I am. She does not respond, but continues sending the email forwards.

I am a graduate of the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, a fine institution that never, ever, ever takes your name off their alumni listserv, no matter how many times you click “unsubscribe.” After graduation, I start looking for work. I sign up for employment newsletters and get a lot of emails from job sites. Success is imminent, probably.

I am someone with a friend who bought a heater that looks like an old-timey fireplace. She sends me a picture of it, sitting in her living room where there is also an enormous Chinese fan and several candles and a carved wooden giraffe. She says the heater was a good deal.

I am a member of a church in Australia, I think? The church choir is working on a children’s music program and sends a LOT of emails about the big show. They use the word “blessed” a lot and I have to remind them a few times that I’m not who they think I am. Throughout, they continue to spell my name “Ersula.”

I am a British woman with a family that is planning their summer reunion. They have a cottage on the coast and are talking about playing badminton. When I write to let them know they’ve got the wrong me, they are gracious and apologetic and say it’s nice to know there’s “another one of us” across the pond. God damn it, why didn’t I just go along with this?

]]>https://urspostrophe.com/2017/11/29/all-the-other-lives-i-live-based-on-people-who-accidentally-use-my-email-address-as-their-own/feed/1mailurspostropheWaking up: A quick thing on systemic harassment and abusehttps://urspostrophe.com/2017/10/30/waking-up-a-quick-thing-on-systemic-harassment-and-abuse/
https://urspostrophe.com/2017/10/30/waking-up-a-quick-thing-on-systemic-harassment-and-abuse/#respondTue, 31 Oct 2017 03:07:59 +0000http://urspostrophe.com/?p=3354As the anniversary of last year’s election draws near, I’ve been getting nervous. Annual milestones are a big thing for me, in general, and I find myself feeling sad and apprehensive and quietly shocked that it’s been this long, while in another sense it’s been so much longer.

I’m in this odd space between hope and despair with everything that’s happened in the news lately. I can’t stop thinking about all the sexual assault allegations coming out of Hollywood, how day after day another name pops up and there doesn’t seem to be any indication that it will slow down. The scales seem to be falling from our eyes. Obviously, these stories have circulated for decades, but right now, a confluence of forces have joined that make the world at large suddenly willing and eager to listen.

When #MeToo was first trending, I participated (in the mildest of ways, literally just posted the hashtag and nothing else), and soon after that I started seeing the criticism of the campaign. We shouldn’t have to talk about our abuse and trauma, people said. Women shouldn’t have to bear the burden of confessing what happens to us at work, at home, on the street.

And of course, that’s true–we shouldn’t “have to” do these things, and certainly no one is required to. But lately I’ve been focused on the long game, the overall arc of history. I believe in the power of telling a story that shouldn’t, technically, have to be told if it means it’s the story that finally gets through to someone.

I am, for lack of a better word, lucky when it comes to sexual assault. Probably the worst experience I ever had was getting fondled while standing on a crowded rush-hour train during my commute home a few years ago. The train was so packed that the man who stood with his groin pressed hard against my thigh had absolutely plausible deniability. I stood still, terrified, but also wondering if it was all in my head. Then some months later, I read a news article about transit harassment that mirrored precisely what I’d experienced. (This one is a good example.)

There are a thousand other little moments, too, that pop up in my memory from time to time. In my high school gym class, a boy called me a whore (kind of out of the blue? It was weird), and my boyfriend laughed. I have no idea what that was about. It was just a thing that happened that, in the moment, I laughed off even though I was hurt and confused.

I’m lucky, and I’m always wondering when that’s going to change. When I’m walking home from work at dusk, or out at a bar with my friends, or running a quick errand downtown, I’m always looking over my shoulder and side-eyeing the man next to me. I hear loud male voices behind me and press pause on whatever’s being piped into my headphones, just in case I need to know what they’re saying.

This is not a spoiler at all, but JD and I have been watching the second season of Stranger Things over the last few days and I just get so angry when I see Nancy and Mike’s worthless, disengaged father on the screen. It’s not the point of the show, but he reminds me of so many enablers of systemic abuse: well-off white men who aren’t outright evil, but distant and removed from the people they’re supposed to care most about, only giving a damn when it threatens to hurt them directly. I want to scream in his face to wake up and care about his family and stand for something real. I want to believe that right now, even if it’s overdue, even if it’s embarrassing how explicitly we have to spell things out, people who have been ignorant of sexism and abuse are starting to put the pieces together. If you’re only getting here now, that’s okay. I’ll take it.

]]>https://urspostrophe.com/2017/10/30/waking-up-a-quick-thing-on-systemic-harassment-and-abuse/feed/0stranger-thingsurspostropheDirtbag teen opinions that I’ve mostly grown out ofhttps://urspostrophe.com/2017/09/23/dirtbag-teen-opinions-that-ive-mostly-grown-out-of/
https://urspostrophe.com/2017/09/23/dirtbag-teen-opinions-that-ive-mostly-grown-out-of/#respondSat, 23 Sep 2017 18:18:15 +0000http://urspostrophe.com/?p=3303Remember the good old days, when you were 16 and your body was weird and your parents were idiots? I definitely knew everything back then and was pretty sure I was the first person to think that normal social conventions were for SHEEP, not me! Here are some of the opinions I held that, thankfully, I’ve been able to move past.

Small talk sux! I hate and resent every second that I’m forced to do it in this dumb society!

Actually, small talk is fine. I’m not GOOD at it, but I understand its utility by now. As much as I would like to stare deeply into the eyes of a stranger and ask them how often they think about their own mortality, that’s just not a thing you can do in the normal course of life. So you start with the basics, about the temperature that you’re both inhabiting at that moment and what your job is and how you know the host and aren’t these snickerdoodle cookies good, and it’s fine. Sometimes it’s even fun and can lead to medium talk (pop culture is good! Let’s make a pun on a Hamilton lyric that relates to the crazy thing the president just said and have a laugh together) or big talk (how often do you worry about one day being old and alone and no one remembering you after you’re dead? I know it’s not just me!).

I still don’t like chatting about the weather with people I’m close to, but I’m trying to let that go too, because life is short.

Making plans in advance is boring and stupid! We should all be more spontaneous and flexible and stop wasting our precious lives on to-do lists and itineraries!

Ah, young Urs, trying so hard to rebel against her true nature. Like my father before me, I am a planner at heart (I do it for a living now, and I’m good at it!). Schedules make me feel secure and happy. I manage my anxiety better when I have a plan. Plus, I have real responsibilities now that I didn’t have at 16, when food just kind of appeared in my life and I didn’t have to make a budget or make sure my laundry was always done. Yeah, it bugged me that my dad could never seem to enjoy the elaborate plans he made for us when I was younger (vacations and so on) because he was always thinking about the NEXT thing we were doing, but I can try to avoid that without going full hippy-dippy.

If you don’t read books you’re stupid and I’m better than you.

This is a mindset that I confess I’m still trying to work my way out of, and I’m not all the way there yet. The thing is, reading is GREAT, but just because words are arranged in book form doesn’t mean they’re thoughtful or insightful or intelligent. Plus we’re living in the golden age of television and no one has a decent attention span anymore. Trust me, if you’d rather watch Bojack than read a novel, I hear you and I’ll probably join you.

I love to read–I joined the Book of the Month Club a few months ago and it’s been super rewarding–but there is so much institutionalized snobbery (and ableism!) around book-reading and it’s really unnecessary.

Ugh, caring about people is too hard. Hasn’t anyone read The Fountainhead?

I read some Ayn Rand as an older teen and it broke my head open and seemed totally fucking revolutionary. The Fountainhead was legitimately my favorite book for four or five years, until sometime in college when I realized I hadn’t thought seriously about it in a long time and the parts of it that I DID remember didn’t…quite…make sense anymore.

I can’t find it now, but I think there was a story on NPR several years ago about the phenomenon of people reading Ayn Rand between the ages of 16 and 20 or so, how Rand’s philosophies speak meaningfully to people in that phase of life where you can taste independence but haven’t quite achieved it yet. And that makes a lot of sense! Especially as an insecure, desperate-to-please young woman, I’m glad I read these novels and got a sense that sometimes, it’s right to put yourself first. I’m just MORE glad that I also moved along, got older, and evolved my thinking.

What did you hate as a teen that you’re basically okay with now? Tell me your dirtbag teen opinions.

]]>https://urspostrophe.com/2017/09/23/dirtbag-teen-opinions-that-ive-mostly-grown-out-of/feed/0dirtbagurspostropheProtected: The 2020 planhttps://urspostrophe.com/2017/08/05/the-2020-plan/
https://urspostrophe.com/2017/08/05/the-2020-plan/#respondSat, 05 Aug 2017 14:49:45 +0000http://urspostrophe.com/?p=3225This post is password protected. You must visit the website and enter the password to continue reading.
]]>https://urspostrophe.com/2017/08/05/the-2020-plan/feed/02020plansurspostropheThe show I love to hate, Royal Pains, is finally over, praise everythinghttps://urspostrophe.com/2017/07/08/the-show-i-love-to-hate-royal-pains-is-finally-over-praise-everything/
https://urspostrophe.com/2017/07/08/the-show-i-love-to-hate-royal-pains-is-finally-over-praise-everything/#respondSat, 08 Jul 2017 21:20:23 +0000http://urspostrophe.com/?p=3119Okay, TECHNICALLY Royal Pains was over in the summer of 2016, but I have always watched it on Netflix when the season becomes available a year later, so I’m just now catching up.

Royal Pains, if you don’t know, is a medical dramedy on USA that ran for eight summer seasons. It’s an easy show to watch, because it takes place in the Hamptons during the summer, when beautiful rich people emerge from their swanky Manhattan cocoons and spend several months throwing cocktail parties for one another. Our story focuses on a concierge doctor and his small team, who go around from mansion to mansion giving the residents cortisol shots and sternly advising them to quit going to so many galas or their conditions will surely worsen.

As with many medical shows, no one ever has strep throat or pneumonia or just a broken ankle around here. People are always coming down with rare diseases that are difficult to diagnose. Usually it starts out with a mild fever or a rash, and in the next scene the patient is having a seizure out on the lawn, her white wine spritzer spilled across the grass and her legs artfully arranged so no one can see up her designer pencil skirt. There is plenty of racing-against-the-clock medical tension, some heartwarming family drama, and even a bit of INTERPOL-ish intrigue.

I stopped truly caring about this show after four or five seasons, but for whatever reason I’ve kept watching it every summer. I should point out that it was one of the few good things I shared with my college boyfriend. He was terrible, and most of the activities we did together were HIS hobbies that I only pretended to like. But Royal Pains was genuinely our thing.

Look, this show isn’t GOOD, and as it’s worn on you can see the cracks forming, the writers reaching for plot. It should have ended a long time ago. But, now it’s over, finally, and I’ve broken free of the Royal Pains shackles that I 100% put on myself. Here are some choice moments from the final season that I want to share with you:

Hank’s dad announces that he’s getting married. To Ms. Newberg, of course! Everyone is very happy and Hank and Evan keep being like “Welcome to the family, Ms. Newberg,” and she doesn’t even say “Oh honey, call me Joan” (or whatever her name is). Keep those formalities alive, even if someone is about to become your stepmother!

Hank rescues a kid who’s had a bad bike accident, after which we learn that the kid and his brother are being looked after by their teenage sister and their parents are dead. It’s all verrrrrrry sketchy, like apparently they have an aunt somewhere but she’s never in town. Probably this will all come full circle later because Evan and Paige are trying to have a baby.

Boris goes to Hong Kong and takes Hank with him for vague medical reasons. This is a weird episode that involves an almost-kidnapped child and Hank’s brief fling with a woman played by the wonderful Constance Wu(!!!). They run around the city and have lots of sex, and later Boris is all “I did a background check on her, she’s fine, carry on,” even though Hank never told Boris about this woman at all. BORIS, YOU CREEPY FUCK, I CAN NEVER TELL IF YOU ARE A CRIMINAL MASTERMIND OR JUST A BORED RICH GUY.

Hank’s sometimes-girlfriend Jill reappears from “Africa,” where she has been working with Doctors Without Borders for the last few seasons. Other than a quick reference to Sierra Leone, which leads into a hospital quarantine because of an ebola scare, Jill doesn’t specify where in Africa she’s been. She literally is just like “I love working in Africa, it’s so FULFILLING!” She’s brought a swarthy European-ish doctor named Hans with her, and we all assume he and Jill are an item, but turns out HE’S GAY and Hank doesn’t find this out until Jill has left again. As Colin Firth would say in Love Actually, “Alone again. Naturally.”

Divya is applying to med school and she and Raj are married and she’s pregnant. I assume Reshma Shetty was ACTUALLY pregnant during the filming because she’s pregnant in the arms and face, too–she’s not just wearing a belly. Jeremiah is opening his own lab and beginning a very sweet romance with a fantasy writer whose work he loves. Side note: I can never tell if Jeremiah’s character is a complex and respectful representation of an adult on the autism spectrum, or if it’s actually kind of gross? Tell me your thoughts.

Evan and Paige go through IVF treatments, which is an overused plot on television. Paige takes a home pregnancy test the day before her blood test at the hospital, because she just can’t wait, and is very sad because the test is negative. In a scene that is DEEPLY Royal Pains, she takes out her grief through painting a portrait of Eddie and his bride as a wedding gift. She is doing this outside on a grassy lawn, WEARING HIGH HEELS. It’s such a ludicrous scene that I yelped. BUT THEN! After she has her real blood test, it turns out that Paige is pregnant after all, and should never have peed on that stick at home because it’s a notoriously inaccurate way to find out if you’re pregnant or not!

The seventh episode is a MUSICAL EPISODE, and such a painfully bad one that I spent most of the episode looking at the ceiling and waiting for it to be over. The way they justify it is to have Cloris Leachman appear as an elderly actress who keeps having hallucinations of people dancing and singing, the way she remembers from her career. For some reason this episode is heavily focused on making sure Hank knows just how much he’s appreciated and beloved in the Hamptons, and how he changed everyone’s lives for the better (mostly by keeping them alive).

In the final episode, Hank, who has been going through a big of an existential crisis about whether he should just embrace singlehood, goes to surprise Jill at her DWB job in “Africa.” They decide to get back together after about five minutes of conversation. Look, man, I don’t care how much chemistry and attraction we have–don’t show up to surprise me at my job, especially if you had to travel thousands of miles to get there, ESPECIALLY if we haven’t been in touch much and you’re not even sure I’m available! You could have emailed!

Now that everyone has gone on to bigger and better things, HankMed seems to have shuttered for good. Except that at the end of the final episode, we skip ahead three years to a Memorial Day barbecue in the Hamptons. Boris is gone for good at this point and has left his entire estate to Evan, which solves Evan and Paige’s problem of a too-full house (they have twins now and they also seem to have formally adopted the street urchins from the beginning of the season). Hank and Jill are visiting from wherever they’re being doctors right now, and there are references to Divya and Jeremiah arriving later. So…HankMed never really ends, which is a point the show felt like making for whatever reason.

I was almost done writing this and JD came over and was like, “What are you writing about?” and I said “Royal Pains,” and he shook his head slowly, and I said “DON’T JUDGE ME,” and he informed me it was too late for that. So here we are. I promise I enjoy a fair amount of prestige television and read good books, too. Let me have this!

]]>https://urspostrophe.com/2017/07/08/the-show-i-love-to-hate-royal-pains-is-finally-over-praise-everything/feed/0rpurspostropheThings I’ve learned about myself in the past monthhttps://urspostrophe.com/2017/06/17/things-ive-learned-about-myself-in-the-past-month/
https://urspostrophe.com/2017/06/17/things-ive-learned-about-myself-in-the-past-month/#respondSat, 17 Jun 2017 14:50:03 +0000http://urspostrophe.com/?p=3071If I absolutely have to, I can navigate an unfamiliar area and get where I’m trying to go. I’m not great at this, and so when JD and I are traveling I let him look at the maps and figure out our route. Possibly one of the most sexist parts of my personality is the part where I just blithely take my man’s hand and let him lead the way.

When I was in San Francisco with my little sister over Memorial Day weekend, however, I realized that she’s even less inclined to navigate than I am. So I did most of the heavy lifting, and we got around pretty well. I even got us on the BART and then off again at the correct spot. Sometimes you convince yourself so firmly that you’re not good at a thing that you don’t realize you’re maybe just average at it.

***

I am a good student but struggle in classroom settings. I just completed a short editing course for work, three long days in a classroom, and had extremely little patience for my classmates’ questions and arguments (it’s copy editing, so there are always these little debates about commas and pronouns and what have you). If I’ve mastered a subject and want to move along, it bugs me to no end to wait for other people to catch up. It’s the same in reverse; I get furious when other people can understand an assignment and master it before me.

It gets extremely personal. I hadn’t been back in a school setting since I graduated with my master’s three years ago, so this is a part of myself that I didn’t recognize until I returned from a long time away.

***

I struggle to stay involved in activism. I care just as much as ever but my motivation to DO SOMETHING shorted out a while ago. This is something I’m ashamed of and I’m hoping that expressing it here will force me to start doing stuff again. I did attend an equality rally for LGBTQ people last weekend, and I very occasionally send a fax to my representatives (who are all doing the good, important work; it’s not like I have an idiot GOP senator to harangue). I plan to send some money to an org or two that support black Americans today. But I’m nowhere near where I was this winter. I was organizing and writing postcards and making phone calls all the dang time, and now all I want to do is curl up and watch TV and hide. Can’t do it, I know.

***

I’m mad at my dad!!! Thanks, therapy.

***

I saw Wonder Woman two weeks ago and am seeing it again tomorrow. Apparently I DO enjoy action movies/superhero stories if the hero is someone I can identify with. HEY HOLLYWOOD: HALF THE POPULATION OF THE WORLD IS LADIES, MAKE MORE KICK-ASS MOVIES FOR US PLEASE

***

Finally, and least importantly, I look pretty good in a big, floppy hat:

]]>https://urspostrophe.com/2017/06/17/things-ive-learned-about-myself-in-the-past-month/feed/0wwurspostropheIMG_2586The email I wrote to my BFF from college about our trip to Amsterdam and Venicehttps://urspostrophe.com/2017/05/21/the-email-i-wrote-to-my-bff-from-college-about-our-trip-to-amsterdam-and-venice/
https://urspostrophe.com/2017/05/21/the-email-i-wrote-to-my-bff-from-college-about-our-trip-to-amsterdam-and-venice/#respondSun, 21 May 2017 17:40:55 +0000http://urspostrophe.com/?p=3006One of my long-distance friends wanted to know about how JD’s and my trip to Europe a few weeks ago went, but she didn’t feel like asking a bunch of questions, so she asked me to write her an email describing the sights and sounds. Here’s the full text of what I sent her (why reinvent the wheel for a blog post, right?):

Things started off very excitedly! Our flight out of Chicago was at 4pm and we were going to land at about 6am in Amsterdam, so JD had the good idea that we should wake up suuuuuuuper early on the day we left, to ensure that we’d sleep well on the flight. It was supposed to help us get a jump-start on the jet lag. So we got up at 5am. What ended up happening was that we barely slept at all on the way across the Atlantic. We tried, we really did, but we were too excited and too cramped in our seats to make it work.

So we arrived in Amsterdam, dropped off our bags at the hotel, and set off to explore, because we couldn’t check in until late that afternoon. No problem, we had kind of a second wind at this point and we were hungry. So off we went. Our first stop was at the cafe where we’d had our first meal of our honeymoon, which I hold like a treasure in my mind. That time, two and a half years ago, I had a delicious hot latte and a fresh baguette with brie and butter and lettuce, which was incredibly simple and delicious. I got the same thing this time, and it was good, but as I’m sure you can understand, it didn’t QUITE hold up to the memory I had of last time.

Actually, I think that’s how Amsterdam felt for me overall. Still a lovely city, still a place I could see us moving to eventually. But not the magical new world it was before. And obviously, how could it be? Last time I went to Amsterdam, I had been married for about 30 hours. It was my first time anywhere in Europe, never mind that city in particular. I had a brand new husband. I got like ten inches of hair cut off. Nothing’s ever going to match the state I was in back then.

Which is fine (preferable, even) when you’re talking about a city that you plan to return to again and again. It should always be a little bit different, and it should be real and even a bit tedious occasionally, the way any place can be. It should be comfortable, not an emotional roller coaster.

Near the Rijksmuseum.

But anyway, I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. JD and I wandered around the city a bit more, stopping here and there for more coffee and snacks, growing increasingly sleepy. An hour before we were allowed to check in, we slumped ourselves into the hotel bar and ate fries and had beers just to stay awake. That hour went on forever. Finally we got into our room and collapsed for a few hours of sleep before dinner.

The next day was kind of weird. It was Sunday, which meant that nothing was open, at least not until 1pm or so. We tried to go to the Van Gogh museum but ended up standing in line in the cold for about 40 minutes before giving up. It was back to wandering from cafe to bar to cafe to bar. Oh! I think that was the night we tried Indonesian food for the first time. We didn’t realize it at the time, but the restaurant we went to ended up being one of the best in the city, and we were the jerks who swaggered in without a reservation and somehow it was fine.

Probably the most touristy thing we did was to visit De Poezenboot, which is a cat rescue on a boat in a canal. We got to go on and say hi to the cats and pet most of them. We also ate really delicious Spanish food (most of this is going to be about food, I can tell you).

JD petting a resident of De Poezenboot.

Okay! Then after like three days it was time to go to Venice. This is a weird detail, but the flight there (90 minutes or so) was so pleasant. I had extreme amounts of legroom and the flight attendants gave us cake.

We arrived in Venice, where the airport smells like mildew, probably because everything is a little bit damp all the time. Then we had to wait around for a while for our taxi, AKA a boat that takes you to the island. Oh, right, this is the part about Venice that I didn’t fully understand before: EVERYTHING IS A BOAT. No one has a car, because where would you drive it? YOU CAN’T. Most of the streets are about the width of a sidewalk or two. If you’re not walking to where you’re going, you’re taking a boat taxi or a bus taxi. We saw an ambulance go by twice, and yes, Venetian ambulances are literally speedboats with sirens. There are police boats, package delivery boats, every kind of boat. HILARIOUS.

We got to our hotel (literally the boat pulled up next to the building and we got out), and when we got into our room I cried, because it was so PETITE and CUTE and there were about three mismatched chandeliers, and we were on the corner so we had two big windows. I opened them up and we had canals on both sides to admire. I cried some more, because I’d wanted to come to Venice for 15 years or so, and it had finally happened.

The view from our hotel.

Then we went out to lunch at this little outdoor restaurant and I got a giant plate of mixed seafood and admired the fancy Italian businesswoman at the table next to ours. She had fancy hair and fancy nails and she kept talking meanly into her cellphone and ignoring her lunch date. I was very impressed by how serious and rude she was. When we came home I got a manicure to match hers. Also there was a cat at that restaurant!

The next several days were a blur of getting lost in the streets (easy to do, the Venetian address system is very inconsistent and anyway you’re always surrounded by buildings or canals, so things start to look the same). We did the usual stop here for coffee, stop there for Aperol spritzes, get gelato or pizza at this little hole in the wall place. I kept trying to speak Italian. The thing is, Venice is such a touristy city and probably a majority of its tourists are English speakers, so most vendors speak it too. I was kind of caught in this battle of–“I should speak Italian because I am IN ITALY and it’s the polite thing to do, to put a teeny bit of effort into communicating with the locals in their language and not be a conceited American who refuses to learn a new thing,” and also “they speak English all the time and they’re busy helping lots of customers, wouldn’t it be easier on them for me to speak English rather than wait for me to struggle through a request in Italian?” Mostly I split the difference and spoke simple English with healthy doses of “grazie” and “si” thrown in.

Prosecco, lots of it, because Italy.

Some memorable scenes from Venice: the early-morning fish markets, where you’d find things like an entire swordfish head, sliced off at the neck and displayed on the table vertically, so that its spear was sticking straight up; two middle-aged Italian men yelling and gesturing emphatically at each other, which seemed very stereotypically Italian; watching the end of Flash Dance in Italian one night in our hotel; getting utterly swindled by a man selling roses on the street (they do this thing where they hand a woman a rose, like they’re giving it to you for free, and then when you thank them and take it, they demand money. Yep, I fell for it, and I was too embarrassed to hand it back. Why am I telling you this? I could have avoided telling this embarrassing story but here you go).

Then Saturday morning we got back in a boat taxi and headed across the water to the mainland, where there were trees and flowering bushes. We got on the plane and I watched La La Land on the flight home, which I give a solid B.

We wandered into Piazza San Marco a few times. Here’s a view of the Doge’s Palace (and the dozens of outdoor restaurants nearby).

]]>https://urspostrophe.com/2017/05/21/the-email-i-wrote-to-my-bff-from-college-about-our-trip-to-amsterdam-and-venice/feed/0IMG_2251urspostropheIMG_2140.JPGIMG_2212.JPGIMG_2234.JPGIMG_2248.JPGIMG_2313.JPGLearning Italian and being okay at ithttps://urspostrophe.com/2017/04/22/learning-italian-and-being-okay-at-it/
https://urspostrophe.com/2017/04/22/learning-italian-and-being-okay-at-it/#commentsSun, 23 Apr 2017 02:21:58 +0000http://urspostrophe.com/?p=2961In preparation for JD’s and my upcoming trip to Europe, which will include several days in Venice, I’ve been teaching myself Italian. I do multiple sessions on Duolingo every day, and recently bought the Pimsleur introduction to Italian. I also got an audiobook of Italian short stories, which I absolutely cannot follow aside from the odd word here and there, but I think just hearing the language on the regular helps with learning.

This is not a new venture for me. I also tried to learn Italian during my freshman year of college, during my winter break from school (I am a master of starting a new project during some down time and immediately abandoning it when real life starts up again). And after my honeymoon, during which JD and I fell promptly in love with Amsterdam and Dutch culture and decided to try to move there one day, I did a Pimsleur Dutch series for a while. Dutch is a workout on the jaw and tongue, let me tell you. I didn’t get very far with that–partly because I found it more difficult than the Romance languages, and partly because even if we do somehow get to live in the Netherlands one day, everyone there is completely fluent in English. Laziness, I guess is what I’m saying.

But yeah, now I’m back to Italian. I don’t know why the language has always appealed to me. I don’t have any Italian in my heritage, or really know any Italian people. Maybe it’s just the romantic way Italy has always been portrayed in America. Maybe Roman Holiday got under my skin.

I’m hardly comfortable with it yet. I can’t keep my conjugations straight. Sometimes my two years of high school French pop up unexpectedly–I keep wanting to refer to my native tongue as Anglais, rather than l’Inglese. Ouistill feels more natural than Sì. Duolingo helpfully tells me that I am “3% fluent in Italian,” whatever that means. It also suggests that I share this achievement on LinkedIn (I will not).

But I am getting better, and my vocabulary is growing. I walk around the grocery store whispering “cipolla” (onion) and “patata” (potato). I know that a monkey is una scimmiaand a plumber is un idraulico. My favorite word in Italian might be cucchiaio, spoon, because it’s so fun to say (coo-KYAI-oh!).

The learning process has made me think more broadly about how miraculous language is. The reality of giving names to objects and making strings of sounds with our mouths in order to create meaning and communicate with someone else is amazing. Being able to do it in one language is incredible enough, never mind several.

It’s another week or so before I start putting my 3% fluency to work. Wish me luck.